About a year ago I upgraded from a MacBook to a MacBook Pro 17″ to get the additional screen space. I used to work a lot from my couch before the upgrade. It gets tiring work from a desk after about 8hrs. The upgrade caused some problems though. I opened up my shiny new MBP, sat on the couch, leaned back, put it up on my knees and bam! the screen crashed down on my fingers.

I took it to the apple store who checked it and told me to call apple care. I called apple care from outside the apple store and after explaining the situation they agreed to service the computer to tighten the hinges. I got my MBP back with slightly tighter hinges but no where near what I was used to on my MacBook. For the past year or so I haven’t been able to work from the couch like I want.

When apple revved the 15″ MBP I checked to see if the 17″ style hinges had made it in the 15″ MBP. They had. I was crushed and kept my eyes out for a new brand of laptop. I hate running linux on a laptop and windows is out of the question, so I waited. When Apple released the new 17″ MBP I read the reviews. There was little mention of the hinges except that it opens further than the old 17″. I started watching the apple forums for reports of loose hinges and found a lot of reports from 15″ MBP owners. Feeling hopeful I went to the Apple store to see if the hinges on the new unibody 15″ are as bad as they are on my 17″, they were.

That was about a week ago and the new unibody 17″ wasn’t in the stores yet. I noticed apple changed the shipping time on their website down to 3-5 business days. I thought if the shipping time is down they must have some in stores. I went back about a week alter and they had some on display. The hinges on the unibody 17″ are significantly tighter than those on the unibody 15″ and the old style 17″. So I bought one, and it’s great. I typed this from my couch without smashing my fingers.

Thank you Apple for learning from your mistakes (although you should have learned from the old 17″ and not pissed off all the new 15″ unibody owners). The hinges on this new MBP are almost perfect and the extended battery life isn’t too shabby either.

2 Comments

Hi Eric, i enjoyed reading your article. I have a 2008 unibody 15″ and have the same hinge issue… i can’t use it in bed. Do you know if Apple released a fix for this issue? Do you know if the new March 2009 15″ is fixed or did they just fix it for the new unibody 17″? Is the 17″ unibody too big to use in bed or the couch? Does the 17″ seem too heavy? Sorry for all the questions! Thanks, Todd

I’m not sure if they have fixed the 15″ or not. The 17″ works fine for me in bed and on the couch but I’m quite tall so the longer base works out better than the 15″. It may not work out so well for shorter people.